Team Production
If first
would like to mention that I liked what we are doing for this particular blog
posts. I found all three articles very intriguing and all of them allowed me to
think more about the situations and experiments. For that being said, I have a
lot to share regarding opportunism and fairness.
There are certainly some examples I
can pull out from my past team project experiences where gift exchange was
evident. When I was in high school, I attended international “program” of a local
private school, where all the classes were held in English for those who want
to study abroad. Because the school was not an international “school”, there
were many local students who were exposed to English curriculum less (From what
I know, international schools are strictly for international students, or students
with a foreign passport and I was a foreigner there). Because the classes were constituted
of many English level, teachers promoted group collaborations to encourage
learning experience within peers. I was one of the students who had learned
English from young age, so I had no trouble communicating and I was confident
that I can present well. Knowing that, I always volunteered to the leader of
the group to figure out our project scope and plan out work streams. I also got
the most portion in presentation. Now, in retrospect, I did not bind to the purpose
of the group project. Like the article about sharing of marbles, I believed that,
since I contributed more to the group, I deserved a better compensation or at
least appreciation from the members, and if the expectation was not made, I was
discouraged and demotivated the next time in the project. So, I can relate to the
“share-the-spoils” experiment very much, where I expect a higher return since I
contributed more. I, in fact, did get higher return, as I stood out from the
class and I had a lesser trouble asking teachers’ letter of recommendation for college
application and was easier to find group members to work with for projects.
I want to
share an idea that popped up while reading the articles, while I do not know if
it is related to any of the readings. I read a blog posts casually few months
ago about a rich friend the blogger had in college. No one knew that the friend
was from a higher income family, because he/she did not show off or spent
extravagantly. However, somehow the classmates knew that the friend was from a
wealthier family. Later, this blogger realized how people were starting to talk
behind this friend’s back, because he/she was not generous “enough” to them. I
believe this is relatable to the article “The Power of Altruism”, where human’s
selfishness derive from monetary compensation, as we can elaborate the situation
as: with the friend’s generosity, most likely spending more on his/her classmates,
would have encouraged others to like him/her more. I do not think my conclusion
of this story was the point that David Brooks is trying to make in his article,
but I just thought this story was interesting, because I cannot deny that I have
never thought of it this way.
I also heard an interesting insight
that made me think a lot about that I want to share and post out there: what is
the motivation of your act of kindness, such as donation or a volunteer work? I
heard from a speech that a lot of the times, the true motivation in participating
in helping others are self-fulfillment. Through teaching and helping others of
what I know, I gain extreme fulfillment that my service was worthwhile. The
speaker also mentioned that some people do so, so that they do not feel bad for
not doing it while many others around them do it. While these can be negative
comments regarding selfishness in acts of kindness, as an intern of a nonprofit
organization currently, I want to say, still, all sorts of generosity and care
is welcomed.
I didn't completely understand the first story, because I needed more background information. You said you were a foreigner, but you weren't at an international school. That needed more explanation for me to understand the situation. Also, purely as a matter of curiosity, it would have helped if you mentioned where this was. Part of the reason for blogging under and alias is to to allow you to say things like that without feeling it will give away your identity.
ReplyDeleteThere is a more general issue that your story in the school brings up, which is how to consider being rewarded for your contribution, on the one hand, and living up to your responsibility, which requires doing what it takes without expecting any reward, on the other. Let me describe some obvious situations where the responsibility form is the dominant one for the situation. Parents take care of their children. They have a responsibility to do that. There is no pay to the parent for giving child care. There may be an emotional reward from discharging the responsibility. But there is no monetary equivalent. Yet once in a while, the parents need a night off. Then they hire a babysitter, who is paid for caring for the children. That's the way it works. The babysitter might like the work and get some emotional reward from caring for the kids. But the babysitter does expect to be paid.
If you are an older kid with a bunch of other kids or you are a more talented kid with a bunch of more ordinary kids are you more like the parent or more like the babysitter? That's the question to work through. My own experience is to be more like the parent most of the time, but I confess that in offering that experience up, my material needs were always well taken care of. So this was more a matter of getting individual recognition or being a member of the team.
The business guru Peter Drucker says you should have one job for pay, to earn a living, and another job where you volunteer, to satisfy your social conscience. If you take that recommendation seriously, how do you pull it off? There are some jobs, nursing is the most obvious one to me but teaching might be another, where there are elements of both in the one job. Otherwise, to do this you can't having the paying job consume all your time. That itself is another important issue.
I realize I have made the story a bit confusing by mentioning that part. Yes, I was a foreigner in Taiwan, where I attended school, but I still went to an international program, because the program was relatively new and had more support for students. My classmates, however, mostly were Taiwanese, and a lot of them just began learning English after joining the program, so their English was not as good.
DeleteYou are right. I should not be expecting rewards in situations like this. I do not like myself when I get upset for not receiving the payback that I expect from someone who I have provided help for. I believe as a student and as a student placed in a group, I should not expect a special reward from providing more, since all students are supposed to be treated equally in terms of scores. This "unfairness", I believe, is present in the real world work environment as well, which is something that I should adopt to.